Financial FAQs
Why are Republicans denigrating Biodenomics, the economic policies passed by
a bipartisan congress since 2021 that is causing 3 percent GDP growth and 4.0
percent unemployment, with 8 million job vacancies looking for workers, and
inflation back to COVID-19 pre-pandemic levels?
Republicans are playing politics in this election year, of course, but
Senator McConnell has touted President Biden for rebuilding some major bridges in
Kentucky with the Infrastructure Act.
In fact, the U.S. has far outdistanced other developed countries in
recovering from the COVID-19. Why? Because President Biden has pulled off a
great renaissance of public-private investments with said bipartisan congress,
the largest investments in renewing the U.S. economy since Roosevelt pulled off
the New Deal during the Great Depression..
Time Magazine described
what it is meant to do: “Bidenomics argues that a large and thriving middle
class is the primary cause of economic growth. “When the middle class does well,
everybody does well,” the President has repeatedly explained. This is the core
proposition of Bidenomics: that prosperity grows from the bottom up and the
middle out.”
Vice President Harris has echoed that slogan in her campaign, because very
few Americans seem to understand Bidenomics at all. A major reason is that four
decades of its predecessor; Reaganomics, or Trickle-down economic policies; have
badly damaged the middle class, followed by the double-whammy of COVID-19,
A Monmouth University Poll finds that just under half the
public gives President Joe Biden credit for this upturn, for instance, but few
say his policies are helping the middle class, especially compared to his
predecessor.
“The president has been touting ‘Bidenomics,’ but the needle of public
opinion has not really moved. Americans are just not giving him a lot of credit
when it comes to the economy,” said
Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling
Institute.
The poll also finds that disapproval of Congress has hit a nominal record for
the past decade.
Time Magazine cites a major reason for the pessimism in a new working
paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation—the
record inequality of the past four decades:
“…had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades
following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate
annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been
$2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. “
The authors assert that since the 1970s, some $50 trillion in wealth has been
transferred from workers to owners of capital with the massive deregulation of
whole industries, including banking, the passing of anti-labor legislation that
weakened union collective bargaining, and massive tax cuts for the wealthiest
that practically halved the maximum income tax rate from 50 percent in 1980 to
28 percent today.
So, it is no wonder that workers in the Rust Belt Midwest want to return to
the ‘good old days’ of post WWII, when income distribution was more equal (but
with fewer Black and women’s rights)?
The problem is that has never been Republicans’ agenda, especially MAGA
Republicans, still the party of the wealthy attempting to sell their credo that
lower taxes and fewer government benefits will benefit all Americans.
Europeans love Bidenomics, however. “With a fast-growing economy, a
strong labour market and falling inflation, the US has outpaced its counterparts
in Europe and elsewhere, says a recent BBC article. That put the US at 2.5% over
the course of the year, outpacing all other advanced economies and on
track to do so again in 2024.”
What will it take for Americans to know and value what we have?
Harlan Green © 2024
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
